1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to recording devices, recording methods, computer programs, and recording media, more specifically, a recording device for performing coding of metadata, a recording method, a computer program, and a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, use of metadata described with information related to data (hereinafter, also described as raw material data) of photographed picture raw material has been advancing in the field of film production. Here, metadata is used to search for the raw material data or to edit the raw material data.
The compatibility of metadata is desirable to effectively utilize the metadata. For instance, the metadata is desirably handled among a plurality of equipments used to produce a film in order to enable a video signal reproducing device such as an editing equipment to use the metadata generated by a video signal recording device such as video camera.
Standardization of the notation format of the metadata is being carried out to give consistency to the notation format and the meaning of the metadata. In MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) 7, the metadata is described using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) having high versatility to standardize the notification format of the metadata.
The metadata defined by MPEG 7 is classified to real time metadata where real time response with the raw material data is requested such as a time code indicating an absolute reproduction position of the raw material data, and non-real time metadata where real time response with the raw material data is not requested such as information indicating a place where the raw material data was photographed.
The real time metadata is often read out and used in parallel to the reproduction of the raw material data, and thus a method of compression coding the real time metadata described using the XML through a binary method, and recording the obtained coded data (hereinafter, also described as BiM (Binary format for MPEG-7 data)) in an aim of reducing time and resource for reading out the real time metadata is proposed (see e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-20328).
In the XML, camera operation parameters in photographing is generally recorded for still images, but the camera operation parameters corresponding to each frame of a moving image is not recorded.
The missing of item can be indicated by not recording the relevant item on the XML. However, a file having a complex data structure is generated if recorded with the BiM format, and a complex process is requested to comprehend the data. For instance, if a certain item is missing in the BiM format, the following items are arranged shifted towards the front, and thus a process of recording the index information indicating which data corresponds to which item is desirable, and the process becomes complicating.